


To Build a Home

by anamatics



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, F/F, Family Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-16 17:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4634511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, Kayden Has Two Mommies</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_things you said when there was no space between us_

 

Moriarty appears on an afternoon in November, when the skies are spitting cold rain and the last vestiges of autumn litter the ground in clumps of browning, yellow leaves. She’s soaked to the bone, her lips blue and her hair stringy. Her eyeliner has run on one eye, a black line down her cheek that she doesn’t even bother to wipe away.

Joan is sitting in front of the fire in, her legs curled up under her in comfortable socks and an oversized sweater appropriated from an ex back at med school. She’s alone; the knock on the door startles her. When Joan opens it to see Moriarty, sopping wet and looking like a smeary, half-drowned cat, she can’t think of anything to say.

“Hello Joan.” There’s a suitcase beside her, and, upon a further glance, a small, dark-haired figure standing under the awning in a yellow raincoat and hot pink rain boots. All the color drains from Joan’s face, as though it is washed away by weeping skies above. “May I come in?”

Words still failing her, Joan steps aside. Moriarty situates the suitcase inside the door and ushers the girl in after it. There’s nothing kind or compassionate about how she moves around the little girl. She cuts through the space as she always does: a knife, all sharp edges and rain-damp skin worn like a cloak of mystery as she shucks off her trench and drapes it, dripping, over the banister.

The girl lowers her hood, revealing dark hair and eyes that Joan would know anywhere, looking up at Moriarty with a wide, questioning gaze. Joan sucks in a shaky breath. The sick feeling in her stomach makes her sway on the spot. Moriarty has taken the girl. Moriarty has kidnapped the girl and has come here. Moriarty has—oh, fuck.

“Hello, Kayden,” Joan croaks as if underwater. “Do you need a towel?”

Kayden’s cheekbones are hollow. When she takes off her rain jacket, Joan is taken aback thin she is. There is a line of yellowing bruises on her neck. They’re deep impressions the size of an adult’s hand. Joan swallows, questions welling up in her throat, clawing for release. Kayden didn’t look half-starved and hungry before. She didn’t look like Moriarty before either, eyes wary and her body held on a razor’s edge, poised and ready to claw her way out of disaster. “Yes, please.” Kayden’s small smile is tight-lipped and betrays nothing. It is Moriarty’s smile.

Joan glances at Moriarty, hoping her tone will allow no argument. “Come upstairs, I’ll get you some clothes.”

Moriarty glances at Kayden, who nods, arms wrapped around herself and looking around with wide eyes. The girl, Joan realizes, is terrified. Moriarty seems to steady herself before following Joan upstairs, smoothing her soaking shirt and nodding at the girl. From the landing, Joan is struck by how unsure Moriarty seems, and how she, too, looks frightened.

“What did you do?” Joan passes Moriarty an armful of towels from the linen closet at the top of the stairs. When Moriarty doesn’t respond Joan throws open her bedroom door and pulls Moriarty inside. The door slams shut. They both wince. “What the hell did you do?” Joan’s voice is barely above a growl.

“Look at her,” Moriarty hisses back. Her voice is hitches, her eyes almost black with rage. “I did what I had to do.”

Joan’s fingers close around a fistful of Moriarty’s sopping blouse. She wants to be close, because Moriarty looks like she’s about to crumble. The rage dissipates, their foreheads bump. Moriarty’s breath smells like coffee. Moriarty pulls back, her expression is haunted. It speaks of a desperation that Joan’s only ever seen on her face twice, when Sherlock was playacting at his very real addiction and when Devon Gaspar was singing her secrets to the entire Eleventh Precinct. Moriarty’s gaze flicks down to her lips and Joan’s heart pounds in her chest.

“No.” Joan lets go and steps away. “You’re freezing; someone has to go be with her.”

Moriarty looks down at the water pooling at her feet. “I’m fine.” She is shivering.

A derisive snort escapes Joan before she can hold it back. “You’re practically blue. You should shower.” Joan makes an assumption that Moriarty, as nosy as Sherlock, will poke through her bedroom if left alone, so she throws open her closet door and pulls down a sweater and produces leggings and a t-shirt from a drawer. She takes them and pauses, close enough that their fingers brush when she hands over the mess of clothing. “You look like hell, Jamie,” she says before ushering her from the room.

Downstairs, Kayden has unzipped her suitcase and pulled out dry clothes. Joan gives her the towel and directs her to the bathroom before setting another log on the fire. There are questions, so many questions, that are swirling around in her head that she isn’t quite sure where to start. Kayden comes back, and upstairs, the shower runs.

“Do you want some cocoa?” Joan asks. She slides the grate into place before the fire.

Kayden’s eyes are Moriarty’s eyes, touched by violence and icy even in the warmth of the fire. She nods mutely, and Joan offers her a hand, leading her downstairs into the kitchen. She puts the kettle on for tea and heats milk in a saucepan. Kayden watches, solemn. Silent.

“Who is she?” Kayden asks after a moment. “I know that you’re a detective, you where there when Daddy died, but I don’t know who she is. She saw—” Kayden swallows and pulls her sleeve to the elbow, the pale skin exposed is livid with bruises. “She shouldn’t have seen.”

“Did it happen at school?”

“No.” Kayden answers dully.

Joan continues the motions of tea and cocoa.

The rain is coming down even harder when they get back upstairs. Joan settles Kayden on the ottoman with a book pulled at random from the bookshelf. Kayden seems happy enough to read about orchids and their identification while in front of the fire. She sips her cocoa and watches Joan.

By the time Moriarty returns, face scrubbed clean and hair gathered in a tangled mess at the top of her head, Kayden has nodded off, curled into a ball on the ottoman, her mug empty beside her. Joan pulls her glasses off and holds out the second mug of tea. She pretends that her discarded iPad doesn’t have a list of open Amber Alerts for all five boroughs scrolling across the screen. She pretends that Moriarty doesn’t let out an indignant little huff when she sees it, as if she’s offended at the thought she’d ever be caught so easily.

“What happened?”

“I—” Moriarty glances at the girl, arms wrapped around herself in Joan’s too-short leggings. She’s gone into the closet upstairs room and collected a different sweater, one that looks old enough to betray who originally bought it. She exhales. “I have people watching her.” Moriarty drains the rest of the tea. “There was an incident at her school. The bruises were seen, a concern was stated to the mother, and the mother brushed it off as a simple childhood accident. Six months ago. Again, three and a half months ago. They just removed the cast.”

“And this time?”

Moriarty stares at the fire, her jaw working. She swallows, her eyes are black. “I pulled her off a flea-ridden mattress in Queens, behind a hidden door, chained up in a basement. The mother is dead, single shot to the head, her face beat bloody and head shaved. I scarcely recognized her.” She shakes her head, her gaze sliding to Kayden.

There is a ringing in Joan’s ears. This isn’t a kidnapping, it is a rescue.

Moriarty sits down next to Joan on the couch, her legs curling up underneath her. Her right side is pressed against Joan’s left and heat radiates off her in waves, so different from how cold she’d been just an hour ago. It’s almost suffocating. “I don’t want the responsibility of a child.”

“Then why collect her yourself?” Joan doesn’t reach out and touch her properly, she doesn’t dare. Instead she turns into the warmth of Moriarty. There is no space between them. “You didn’t have to get involved. This isn’t like last time. You have—”

“I have people for this, I know. I couldn’t risk anyone discovering her. Not after Devon.” Moriarty’s gaze never leaves the girl; her chest rises and falls in time with Kayden’s steady breathing. “I never thought she’d look like me, you know? When she was born she was just a pink, wrinkled thing that wouldn’t stop screaming. I couldn’t stand looking at her, but I couldn’t let her go, not completely.” She lets out a little sigh and Joan waits. This is as close to the real story, she knows, that she is ever going to get. She scarcely dares breathe for fear that it will make Moriarty’s walls slam back into place and the truth is replaced with lies. “They thought I was an unfortunate waif of a girl, pregnant, just out of university, no man in sight. They paid for my care and my time at hospital. They had no idea. Now they’re both dead. The father too.”

Somehow, Joan isn’t surprised she killed her ex-lover. Especially after her secrets were aired so publically within her organization. What is surprising is the lack of revulsion she feels for the act. This is perhaps Moriarty’s first unselfish murder, the first where her agenda is not the only thing to weigh on her mind as she pulls the trigger of her gun and shoots her lover dead.

“What happened?”

“He’d grown fat, made content spilling my secrets. Devon paid him handsomely for his tales, pity really.” Moriarty does not confirm anything, Joan is a fool for thinking that she would. “She was locked away, Joan. They wanted to lure me there and remove both of us from the picture. They sent photos of the mother. They beat the girl—”

“Her name is Kayden, Jamie,” Joan says gently.

“It’s a ghastly name.”

“It’s what she’s called. You can’t take that away from her.”

“I have to do something.”

Joan says nothing, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She sips her tea. It’s stone cold now.

The silence stretches, Moriarty will not admit what she did to the people who took Kayden, and Joan will not ask her to spell it out. She doubts the police will find anything but trace evidence. The only loose end is sleeping before them, lips parted and drooling. Joan gets up and takes the throw blanket that Sherlock likes to sit under on cold nights when he cannot be bothered to supervise a fire and puts it over Kayden’s small form.

“There is a boarding school, in Connecticut.”

“Miss Porter’s?” Joan settles back in beside her. This feels oddly parental. She isn’t sure she likes it.

“You know it?” Moriarty’s fingers curl against Joan’s, but they are not holding hands.

“A few friends went there for high school. It’s a good school.” Joan closes her eyes. The fire and the warmth is enough to make her feel sleepy. The rain lashes against the windows, it’s bordering on freezing rain now. Maybe it will snow. Maybe Moriarty will stay. “Will she be safe there?”

“If I take away her name.” Moriarty’s fingers clutch at Joan’s wrist, vicelike, unrelenting. “If I take away her name and give her yours.”


	2. Chapter 2

_things you said when I told you to stop_

 

She follows Joan around the house like a sullen shadow, her feet silent in socks, slipping on the hardwood floors. There is none of the joy that Joan remembers from her childhood in Kayden’s careful, measured slides. She seems to be devoid of any feeling at all.

They convert the spare room on the third floor into a bedroom for Kayden after she spends a week sleeping on the couch in the study. No one has lived on the third floor in years, and dust streaks the windows. Kayden blows on one, her breath fogging a small circle, and rubs her sleeve on the dirty glass.

“Don’t do that.” Joan is distracted; an armful of Ms. Hudson’s cleaning materials in her arms and her mind a million miles away, turning over evidence for a case that’s threatening to go cold. She dumps the cleaning products on the rickety old table underneath the window opposite Kayden. “Now I have to wash your shirt.”

“Oh.” Kayden looks down at the grey stain on her orange shirtsleeve, her hair hanging limply around her face. She needs a haircut. She needs a lot of things that Joan has no idea how to give her. “Sorry.” Her tone belies the sentiment.

Joan has never wanted children. Oren has always been in the family way, and her friends have paired off and had babies one by one, but Joan has never felt that urge. The urge to foster life comes to her in other ways, in keeping people alive under her surgical knife and then again in keeping them from their addiction. She’s failed at both and Kayden’s presence feels like the charm of a third try.

Perhaps she’s meant to play the foil: the moral compass to a girl whose guardian has no such scruples.

Downstairs, Joan can hear raised voices. They’re arguing again. Sherlock does not like this grand plan of Moriarty’s, and Joan has held her tongue in favor of trying to help Kayden understand why she is suddenly under the protection of someone as ruthless as Moriarty. She’s put her into therapy, she’s tried to keep her routine as close to the same as possible, going so far as to explain the situation (albeit abstractly) to Kayden’s headmistress, her soccer coach, and, on Moriarty’s insistence, her new art teacher.

“She doesn’t want me,” Kayden says dully. She’s picking at the peeling paint on the windowsill now. “She never wanted me; she gave me away because I was inconvenient.”

“Is that what she told you?” Joan takes a roll of paper towels and passes them to her with a bottle of Windex. Kayden looks at both of them as though they’re some sort of alien contraption and Joan sighs. “You spray, and then wipe in circles.” Joan demonstrates and Kayden’s eyes, so cold and familiar, light up. “If you were truly inconvenient to her, I don’t think she would have had you at all.”

In retrospect, as she relays it later to Sherlock, it is probably the wrong thing to say. The child seems to take it in stride. Sherlock will tell her that children are remarkable creatures capable of great compassion and understanding that the perils of adulthood strip away and replace with bitter cynicism.

Kayden sucks her lower lip into her mouth and tilts her head. “Because being pregnant wasn’t easy?”

Joan’s head dips in her agreement. She knows nothing of Moriarty’s pregnancy with Kayden, save what Moriarty’s told her – and even then, Joan can’t be sure her stories are true. “She wants what’s best for you, that’s why she gave you away. She knew she couldn’t take care of you.”

“She’s incapable of caring for another human,” Kayden answers glumly, returning to wiping the windows. “She’s broken.” She sucks in a slow breath and Joan’s heart breaks. “I think I am too. I didn’t cry when Mommy died.”

Moriarty had photographs of the mother in death; the gunshot wound had virtually obliterated what was left of her face after the savage beating she endured. Kayden had witnessed the whole thing, she still had nightmares. Joan remembers what she learned in med school and exhales slowly. This, at least, she has experience handling. “Everyone grieves differently, Kayden. It’s part of what makes us human.”

Later, when Kayden has left with Sherlock to go play chess against his criminal friends at a halfway house, Joan stands in the kitchen not speaking to Moriarty. She’s perched at the kitchen table, a mug of tea clasped between her hands, her eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion – or perhaps tears. She’s been gone for a week and a half this time, and came back in the night, slipping into bed next to Joan and not waking until noon.

“What is this?” Joan asks at length. She’s running through the contents of the refrigerator, and starts pulling things out at random. She has to feed Kayden something for lunch all week.

Moriarty shifts, resting her chin on her palm. Her face is in profile, caught on the weak sunlight that filters through the high windows. “What is what?”

“This.” Joan is holding a sweet potato and gestures to the room writ large. “I told you I did not want any of this and yet here we are.”

“I don’t want one either.” Moriarty’s voice cuts through the room like a knife. “Do you think I enjoyed having to worry about the life I kept growing inside of me despite my best instincts to terminate? I wasn’t a girl caught up on some farcical dream of getting married and having a family. I wanted to see if I could do it, to see if I would change, holding the life I created in my arms. She was born. I gave her away. I didn’t care.”

“You obviously care, Jamie.” Joan rummages in a drawer for the peeler. “Otherwise Kayden would be dead. There’s some instinct in you that wants to protect and provide for her.”

Moriarty’s smile is wide then, it lights up the whole room. She looks at Joan as Sherlock sometimes does, like she’s the only thing in the whole world worth looking at. “I gave her you, didn’t I?”

Joan feels sick to her stomach. She grips the peeler tightly; the sweet potato is slippery in her hands. “Stop it,” she mutters.

“Come again?”

“I said, stop it.” Joan starts to methodically remove the skin from the sweet potato, revealing the pale, Creamsicle orange underneath. The words scratch and claw, threatening to wrench from her throat and end this now, before it can begin. Joan chokes them down, fighting with all of her might to remember the child, and not the murderer who’s looking at her like she’s heaven-sent. “I’m not—”

Moriarty gets to her feet and crosses to stand beside Joan, reaching out and stilling Joan’s hand. The peeler slips from her grip and Joan turns. Moriarty’s eyes are the color of the ocean just after a winter storm. “You are the only one I’ll ever trust with her care again.”


	3. Chapter 3

_Things you said when you thought I was asleep – jxm_

 

Moriarty comes in late, exhausted. Alone.

Sherlock is out with Alfredo at a meeting. He goes more now than he’s ever gone before, and Joan still sees him slip up on occasion. It’s painful to watch, his mind wavering between the haze of drugs and sudden clarity that comes afterwards.

Kayden doesn’t understand.

“If it’s so bad why does he it?” The question comes after Joan fumbles her way through an explanation tinged with bullshit and platitudes. It is unsettling to watch Kayden, hair limply framing her face (she still needs a haircut) and a plate of pasta before her. She’s clutching her fork like a weapon, stabbing at the broccoli Joan is insisting she eat. “It makes my stomach hurt.” She waves the tree she’s stabbed and it falls on the floor.

Joan exhales. “We have Tums if you get gas. You need to eat them, Kayden.”

This has become a standoff, another nightly battle Joan doesn’t want to fight. She isn’t her mother, this kind of obligation makes her feel sick. She’s fumbling through something that doesn’t resemble any parenting she’s ever known, ill-fitting and uncomfortable.

“I don’t want to,” Kayden pushes the plate away. Her nose is wrinkled and she looks so much like how Moriarty looks when she’s displeased that Joan gropes blindly backwards and grips the counter hard. Kayden fixes Joan with a stare that speaks of a lifetime of hurt crammed into less than a year, and says, quite forcefully, “I want to eat what _she_ brings you later.”

Oren told her to bargain. Kids at this age, he assured her, are basically bookies with everything about their lives.

“If you eat your broccoli now, you can have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow. I’ll do them up o-bento style.”

Kayden eyes Joan, twirling her fork between her fingers. “And you’ll let me bring in a pb&j on Friday?” 

Joan glares at her and Kayden obligingly stabs another broccoli tree and shoves it in her mouth. “Your school has a ban on nuts, Kayden. Three of your classmates could die if you so much as touched them too soon after eating a sandwich. I don’t want that responsibility.”

Kayden sighs and eats more of the broccoli. “You don’t want any responsibility, you mean.” She finishes chewing and uses her napkin to clean up the spilled food on the floor before taking her plate and putting it in the sink. “That’s alright, I doubt she wants it either.”

It is all Joan can do to keep together as she clears away the rest of the dishes and washes them one by one. Her hands are shaking, slipping on wet flatware. A plate tumbles to the floor and shatters. Joan swears quietly.

She isn’t sure she can do this.

When Joan goes upstairs an hour later, Kayden has dozed off reading. It is hard for Joan, to wake the little girl, a gentle nudge and she’s be launched back into parenting, a profession that bore all the marks of another ill-fitting career. From the landing, Joan watches her sleep, one hand curled around her book, the other flung out wide, open, as if asking to be held.

Kayden is starved for something Joan cannot quite bring herself to give away. She’s growing used to the silences, all the bargaining, and the rages. Kayden is a child hurt, scarred deeply. The doctor Joan has taken her to see says as much. Consistency in her routine is key now, and Joan doesn’t want to give up on her just yet.

Perhaps it’s because she’s too stubborn, or perhaps it’s because she’s curious.

She turns out the light and closes the door, tucking the book onto the bedside table. She’s almost downstairs, caught in the loneliness of this big house with its long, narrow rooms, when Moriarty walks in.

She has that air about her, the dangerous buzz that Joan finds revolting in the same breath she finds it intriguing. Her eyes are wide, her hair a frizzing yellow halo from the cold wet wind blowing in off the East River. She’s playing a long game, Joan doesn’t know quite what at, only it involves her spending inordinate amounts of time down in the Financial District and has her complaining bitterly about the Freedom Tower construction.

Tonight though, tonight she brings Indian food home (that Joan knows Kayden despises through trial and error) and a bottle of wine that Joan eyes with some trepidation before getting mugs down from the kitchen cupboard.

“I feel like I’m back at college,” she says. They’re sipping what is probably obscenely expensive wine out of mugs. Joan’s reads a ‘world’s best detective.’

Moriarty, who has been relegated to one of Sherlock’s favorite  _Far Side_  cartoons, raises her eyebrows. “Is this a date then?”

“You left your child with me,” Joan points out. “I think I’m more of the babysitter.”

There’s a beat then, Moriarty’s eyebrows dip, knitting together and she swallows her wine and sets the mug back down. Joan sucks in air, Moriarty’s lips are stained red with the stuff, and her tongue catches a drop, just at the corner of her mouth.

The want for her, the need, it catches Joan off guard. She swallows hastily, and changes the subject. Kayden is just upstairs, and a poor sleeper, as children who have been through trauma so often are. “I caught her looking at our case files.”

“Did she offer any insight?”

“Jamie, she’s nine years old, she doesn’t need to see—”

“That’s the problem, Joan, she already has. Best let her look.” Moriarty’s expression is unreadable. There’s a smear of curry at the corner of her lip, orange staining to brown with the red of the wine. Joan raises her napkin, and rubs it away.

Nothing is said for a long time after that and when Moriarty gestures towards Joan’s bedroom, Joan only has a word of protest, the child – the child – her world is consumed by her now, before Moriarty’s lips silence even her best intentions.

-

It’s raining again. It always rains at this time of year, the sun is weak and the nights are long. The air, even out in the icy damp, smells like snow. Joan sleeps with the window open, even at this time of year. The radiator in her room is rambunctious and while the rest of the house is cold, her bedroom is always stiflingly hot and stuffy, more so when she’s not the only one in her bed.

It’s the rain that wakes Joan. The steady drip from outside that turns into a torrent of rain pounding against the trash bins in the alley below. Beside her, Moriarty’s face is serene in sleep, her brow furrowed slightly and her lips parted as she curls around Joan. She’s drooling on Joan’s shoulder. Joan shifts away from the wet spot and exhales. The rain is a powerful, almost hypnotic lull. Sleep grips her and she’s just starting to doze when she hears the door creak open.

Moriarty is completely awake in the space of the time it takes the intruder to enter the room. She sits up, unabashedly naked, the gun Joan wishes she didn’t keep under the pillow trained at the intruder.

“Oh,” Kayden’s voice is small. “I didn’t know you were here.”

The bed shifts and a smile pulls at Joan’s lips as Moriarty hurriedly shoves the gun back under the pillow. It’s only with some doing that she pulls the sheet up over her chest. “Hello Kayden.”

The bed dips. Joan’s got a shirt on the floor over there, or at least she thinks she does, Moriarty hadn’t been exactly judicious about where Joan’s clothing fell earlier. Joan keeps her eyes closed and stays still, a falsehood she’s perpetuating, a parenting adventure she never expected to have. “I had a bad dream,” Kayden says. Her voice is distant, she’s still in the doorway. Joan wonders if she should intervene.

There is a long moment of silence before Moriarty exhales. “Come here.”

The door creaks shut and the bed shifts as Kayden clambers onto the end. “Is Joan asleep?” she asks, her tone takes on a hopeful note.

“Joan sleeps like the dead,” Moriarty informs the child. Joan exhales. Moriarty’s voice is barely audible over the rain. “She spent almost a decade not sleeping and now she values it above most things.”

“Did she have bad dreams too? Does she owe Morpheus for the time she spent away?” Sherlock has been reading Kayden  _Sandman_  comics when he thinks Joan isn’t playing attention. “I don’t want to owe him anything.”

Moriarty lets out a quiet chuckle. “I’m not sure that’s how it works, darling.” It’s the first time that Joan has ever heard her express affection for the girl. She feels like an intruder in this small conciliatory moment.

“You say it like you have them too.” Kayden moves up the bed, settling herself between Moriarty and Joan, kneeing Joan in the back as she rolls so that they’re back to back. Moriarty pulls the blankets up over them both and the room goes silent.

For a while, all Joan can hear is the rain and the steady whine of the radiator as it heats to the point of almost bursting before settling once more.

“Everyone has nightmares.”

“How do you make them go away?” Kayden’s voice is muffled by the pillow.

Moriarty is silent for a long time after that. Joan feels herself drifting, pulled back towards sleep. “When I was a child, I didn’t sleep,” she begins. Joan has to strain to hear her. “Now I think about other things. Dreams are the way our minds pull apart experience and put it back together, they’re a blank canvas upon which we paint our fears. You have seen horrible things in your short life, but you mustn’t forget that you shan’t see them again.”

Kayden kicks Joan and Joan rolls over, drowsy despite the eavesdropping. “Time is it?” she asks, voice thick with sleep.

“Close to three,” Moriarty answers, hand flung over her eyes. “Go back to sleep.”

Kayden has looped her arm around Moriarty’s stomach, her fingers fisted in the soft fabric of Joan’s borrowed t-shirt. She turns, her eyes shining against the blackness of her hair in this light. “I had a nightmare.”

“Listen to Jamie, Kayden.” She’s mumbling; burying her nose in Kayden’s hair and letting the rain pull her back into sleep. “She’ll keep you safe, even from dreams.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

_Things you said that I wasn’t meant to hear - jxm_

To say that Kayden blossoms under Joan’s care would be a lie. It is more a study in attrition.

She sits, her face a sullen storm of youtuhful indignation, as Joan stares at the mess on the floor. There is a swirl of color on the floor of Kayden’s bedroom. All the books and clothes are shoved away under the table by the window or onto the bed. All that remains is this perverse mural on Sherlock’s hardwood floors, done in finger prints and expensive oils that Kayden should never have had access to in the first place.

Joan runs a hand through her hair and stares at Kayden. She’s used to this from Sherlock, from Moriarty even, but from a child who isn’t old enough to be out of elementary school? Joan has no idea how to pull apart her very adult ways of coping with the grown up oddities in her household and apply them to a child. She has no idea what to say at all.

“You should wash your hands,” Joan settles on.

Kayden looks up at her sharply, her head tilted to one side, her brow furrowed. She was expecting a different reaction then.

“Use soap.” Joan adds as she turns away. She won’t give Kayden the satisfaction of knowing that Joan is upset that she’s acted out. Instead, Joan goes downstairs and calls her mother.

She’s been doing this a lot more recently. Her mother is growing older, her stepfather is gone and Oren is too busy for more than a phone call once a week if he’s available. The burden falls to Joan to keep up steady communication with her mother, when all she wants to do is let it lapse. There is a bitter sense of disappointment that comes when she speaks to her mother these days. A hollow, creeping feeling that settles around her like a blanket of sticky wet snow, clinging to everything and soaking into her bones. Her mother lectures on duty and obligation and Joan wishes to talk about anything but her failure as a daughter. She hasn’t been good to her mother, she hasn’t lived the perfect life expected of her, but Joan doesn’t fit so easily into the neat little boxes her heritage dictates. She hates the pressure, the constant worry that she might someday become like her father in her mother’s eyes, sick and disappeared into the maze of streets and tunnels occupied by the homeless population in this city. It eats away at her, gnawing at the pit of her stomach and making these calls feel more like torture than simple familial conversation between mother and daughter.

The call begins as it always does: a one-sided conversation about the goings-on of the local community. Mrs. So-and-So’s husband has died. Jan-Lin from downstairs wore yellow out over the weekend. How scandalous! Mr. Feng’s son James is still single and still looking for a girlfriend. He’s a doctor, don’t you know?

(Joan doesn’t point out that she is also a doctor.)

“ _Ma_.” Joan finally says. “I need your advice.”

She’s leaning against the too-warm radiator in her bedroom. The window is open and the sharp contrast to the heated metal coils pressing into the backs of her thighs and the icy-cold wind whipping off the river is refreshing. It pulls her from her usual lull of ‘mmhmm’s and ‘uh-huh’s that usually punctuate these conversations.

“What is it?” Her mother asks.

Joan exhales. “Do you remember Jamie, the friend who came with me to dinner a few months ago?” It was an impromptu thing, they’d just fucked and were about to do it again when her phone buzzed with the reminder of the three-times-put-off dinner she’d scheduled with her mother weeks ago. Moriarty regarded the phone, her breathing shallow over Joan’s shoulder as her fingers traced idle patters on the small of Joan’s back.

“We’d better get going.” Moriarty pulled away and started to dress. Her cheeks were still flushed with sex, her back an angry network of scratches Joan had left behind during their coupling. A spot of blood appeared on the back of her bra and Joan hissed and tossed the phone aside, going into the bathroom and coming back with a damp cloth to dab away the stain.

“You don’t need to come.” It came out a mumble, her lips pressing to the deepest wound.

Moriarty turned and regarded Joan over her shoulder. “Joan, she’s your mother, don’t you think I should meet her?”

A cold gust of air has the curtains fluttering and Joan lurching forward to close the window. There’s no reason for them to be heating the outdoors. She shouldn’t be thinking about that night. So many things had gone wrong that night.

(So many things had gone right.)

“The blonde right, she’s English? Joanie you have so many friends these days, its lovely.” Her mother’s tone is disinterested and when she adds, “Though I have to say she’s a welcome improvement to the usual riffraff you hang around with thanks to Sherlock,” Joan closes her eyes and bites back a cutting remark about her mother’s choice in friends all being gossipy old Chinese grandmothers.

“Yeah, that’s her. She has a…” she catches herself almost saying daughter, but knowing that it isn’t the right word. “Niece,” Joan settles on, “who’s staying with us for a while. Her mother passed away and Jamie is making arrangements for her care. I’ve been spending a lot of time with her and I don’t know how to—”

_How to what?_

Joan sighs and stares out at the dreary sky above. “I don’t know how to parent this child.”

“Why would you need to, Joan. She isn’t your child?”

“It takes a village,  _Ma._ ” She replies. “She’s staying here.”

“Oh.” And with that, her mother launches into a steady stream of parenting advice that still isn’t entirely sure she wants, but is content to receive. This is the first conversation they’ve had in a long time, probably since before Joan and Sherlock started working together, that doesn’t feel the strain of her mother’s disapproval at her life choices. There are no cutting remarks, no biting commentary, just simple advice that has Joan climbing back up the stairs twenty minutes later with a mop and bucket full of soapy water, intent on talking to Kayden about what is bothering her. On the landing she pauses, adjusting the bucket and wondering if she should go down to the basement to collect some turpentine too. Inside Kayden’s room there are voices.

“—don’t care about me; you just want to ship me off to some boarding school where I’ll never bother you again.” Kayden is clearly upset and Joan swallows, mentally preparing herself to comfort a distraught child. “I’m not some disposable thing.”

“You know it isn’t like that.”

Joan sucks in a short breath of air, surprised. She didn’t know Moriarty was home.

“Darling, I need you to listen to me. I have given you Watson because she is the best person I know. I cannot—I  _will not_ —allow you to come under threat again. There are people who wish to use your relation to me to hurt you, and to hurt me through hurting you. You must understand that this cannot happen. Acting out, mucking up your room and ruining hundreds of dollars in paints is not going to change that all we want is what is best for you.” Moriarty’s tone is even. “You’re too good to be drawn into this world, Kayden. I won’t stand for it.”

“I’m stuck in it because you.”

Moriarty’s sigh is audible, even from the hallway. “What would you have me do, Kayden? Spirit you away with me, take you everywhere I go? Teach you my methods? Let you watch as I do what I do? No child needs to see that.”

“It’d be more fun than being shipped away to boarding school.”

“Or painting a black hole on your bedroom floor? Your technique needs work, but it’s a start. Why don’t you get a cloth and clean it up? I doubt Watson will appreciate you getting oils everywhere.”

Joan quietly sets the mop down and retreats back down the stairs. This time, at least, she’s been spared the parenting.


	5. Chapter 5

_Things you said when I was scared – jxm_

 

Kayden goes missing on a Tuesday. Her absence is like a knife to Joan’s gut when she arrives home, frantic after retracing Kayden’s usual route home from school. There is no sign of her. Joan begs the station master to let her check the security camera footage leaving the station. Kayden is like smoke, vanished into the cold December sky. She never got on the train.

“Anything?” Sherlock has his phone pressed to his shoulder. Joan knows without asking who he’s on the phone with. The tension in his every movement, and the way his toes are wiggling even when the rest of him is perfectly still can only mean one thing. He’s caught being the one with Moriarty when the mask Moriarty falls away and all that’s left is the emotionless, dangerous woman beneath.

“Nothing.” Her fingers twist at the lapels of her coat. She’ll be right back out in the cold, she’s sure. It’s for the best to leave it on. She can’t think of anything beyond this moment. “What does she say?”

The phone is raised to Sherlock’s ear, wordlessly. He listens a moment, before passing it over to Joan. She looks up to meet his eyes, but nothing of what he’s thinking is betrayed on his face. They haven’t called the police yet, even though Joan’s every instinct is screaming for Marcus and Captain Gregson’s reassuring calm. Kayden isn’t their child legally; it will take some negotiation to ensure that no one jumps to the wrong conclusion.

“I have a lead, but I am unsure of its validity. She has not left the city.” Moriarty does not wait for Joan to say hello.

She is expecting a pronouncement of the potential kidnapper’s untimely demise to come across the line, not an assertion of facts they already know. It sits uneven, hard in her stomach. Joan is trying to avoid thinking about Moriarty being as helpless as they are in this situation. “Of course she hasn’t, how would they get her out?”

“How would the get her out? Shall I give you all the ways? If it were me, I’d drug her and stuff her in a gym bag. She’s just a little thing.” Moriarty’s tone is cruel, whip-sharp and mean to hurt. She is lashing out in fear.

A beat of silence. Joan knows Moriarty has resources the NYPD can’t even fathom at her disposal and she is not using them. To use them would be to expose Kayden to even more danger. Moriarty is terrified. Joan can feel it in her breathing, ragged and unsteady. The staccato nature of it gets Joan, gets her heart racing faster than before, and leaves her breathless with the all-consuming shroud of worry that settled over her shoulders.

The sick, nagging fact of the matter: Moriarty will obliterate these kidnappers, sits ill in Joan’s throat. It is a steady reminder of what happened twice before. Joan refuses to forget Devon Gaspar’s throat cleaved near in two. She cannot wonder if maybe it is justified: killing to save a child.

Hot, frustrated, tears prick at the corners of her eyes, Joan swallows with some difficulty. She won’t think that way. Falling apart isn’t an option “Then what do we do?” she asks, her voice half-choked with revulsion at the traitorous thoughts of violence visited upon those foolish enough to try this for a third time.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Jamie, I’m not sure we have—”

“Ten, then, Watson.” She hangs up, leaving Joan listening to silence. In the foyer, the clock on the wall ticks and the sound fills Joan’s head with seconds of time where they could be acting. They shouldn’t be waiting around for Moriarty to darken their doorstep once more.

Joan goes downstairs and puts the kettle on. It’s something to do. She shrugs off her coat and leaves it on a chair. The dull pound of a headache born of emotional exhaustion slows her process. Today was like any other day. Joan got up, made Kayden’s lunch and fed her breakfast. Sherlock took her to the train. She had school, where she was present and participated in all of her classes before leaving at her usual time to walk the two blocks to the subway station. The N Train would have been an express, given the window, so she’d wait for the local. As far as the security footage showed, Kayden never made it onto the train.

Water spills out over Joan’s hands. She’s filled the kettle too full. A small, almost hysterical laugh escapes her lips. She’s losing it. She dumps some of the water back into the sink and sets the kettle on the stove. The burner refuses to light. She fumbles for matches, cursing, crying. She strikes a match, her hands are shaking. They won’t go still. The flame goes out. She tries again, this time breathing slow and even, deep calming breaths. The match catches the pilot light and the burner lights so quickly that she drops the match. It burns in the burner well until there is nothing left of it but blackened ash.

She slumps down onto a kitchen chair, her elbow hits the table hard and a new wave of tears wells up within Joan. The dry, wretched sound that escapes her lips sounds distant, her mind flung far off and her body ungrounded. She buries her head in her hands, gulping down air and hiccupping. Kayden isn’t even her child. Kayden is unwanted, and yet all Joan wants is to see her safe and home once more.

They’ve been play-acting at parenting; this must be what a parent feels like when their child is gone. The insurmountable worry and the drowning fear that come from caring for young life. Joan sniffs. She has to pull herself together.

A hand touches her shoulder, an anchor.

Moriarty is staring down at her, her expression impassive and her hair wilted. Her jacket is damp with the freezing rain outside. Her fingers are icy cold on Joan’s cheek. “The kettle,” she says.

Joan starts, head feeling sluggish through the haze of tears. She hadn’t heard the whistle. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” She rubs at her face. Her makeup’s run; her hand comes away smeared black. “Anything?” She hardly dares hope.

“I’m sorry I was not more forthcoming on the phone.” Picking at an invisible speck of dust on her jacket, Moriarty affects a kind of nonchalance that has Joan reeling, wanting to snap at her to care, but her eyes are full of rage that Joan recoils when their eyes meet. “I had my reasons.”

“I—” Joan swallows. She doesn’t want to ask. She’s fretting, avoiding the fear. She glances down at the kettle, the pot holder stark orange against her skin. “Do you want some?” She hardly gets the words out before another wave of panic hits her.

Moriarty is there, in her personal space with all her cold dampness, catching her face between icy fingers. “Let me do it.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “I know where she is, and I know what’s happened.”

“Why didn’t you say anything on the phone then?” The kettle is still wailing. Moriarty reaches down and turns the burner off. Slowly the wail fades to silence. Upstairs, Joan hears heavy footfalls, and a familiar voice. Gregson is here. Marcus too, his voice joining with the captains, pitched low and concerned. Moriarty cannot linger then. “Jamie, why didn’t you tell me?”

_I thought you trusted me._

She exhales, her lower lip sucked into her mouth. “My driver. I don’t trust him, he’s new.” She sneers out the last word, her lip curling. Her eyes find Joan’s, her fingers splay out wide on Joan’s chest, as if to reach in and pluck her heart from her body. She exhales. Some of the warmth that Joan tricks herself into seeing in these quiet moments creeps back into Moriarty’s eyes, softening the icy rage into something more like hot, livid anger. “Snatch and run for ransom. Her adoptive father, before Devon took care of him, was a very wealthy man.”

Joan boggles at her. “This has nothing to do with you?”

Moriarty shrugs. “Most who would play that sort of game with me know better after what happened to Devon. It seems that these idiots did not and seized an opportunity. A mistake, I assure you. The girl missed the local and was waiting for the next train. There was a delay because of something over by 34th, I don’t have the details as to what, it could have been manufactured to better facilitate this. They took her down the track and into the tunnels, not out to street level as you initially suspected, it explains why there was no video of her leaving the station. They foolishly circled back through an unused station with no street access. My men have them surrounded.”

A weight slides off Joan’s shoulders. She turns away from Moriarty and collects two mugs from the cabinet. There’s a settling sort of feeling as she sets the mugs down on the counter. She inhales, her breath burning in her throat. “What would it entail?”

She hates herself for even asking.

“That almost sounds like you’re condoning the outcome, Joan.” A mocking tone has crept into Moriarty’s voice. Her eyes glint with something like glee. Joan hates her.

Something breaks within Joan then, a fierce protectiveness for the child Moriarty has given to her to protect because Moriarty is too broken to do it herself. She grabs a fistful of Moriarty’s jacket and tugs. Moriarty’s off balance, her expression somewhere between happiness and disbelief. Joan understands  _that_  better than she understands the easy way this is threading together to spell out the destruction of everything she stands for. Joan leans in, her teeth clenched. She will not admit it; she will not give weight to all of her fears and the deadly consequences of crossing Moriarty. “The outcome is Kayden here, and safe.”

“Then I shan’t bore you with the details.” Her grip relaxes. 

“Don’t--” She falters, the rest of her plea falling silent. She doesn’t know what she wants. Just to see Kayden back and safe. 

“Don’t what, darling? Kill them?” Moriarty’s fingers brush her cheek, at another tear streaked black with mascara. “Do you really think so little of me?” Joan stands there, ashen-faced at what she’s done, as Moriarty leans in and brushes a kiss against her cheek. “No traces,” she whispers as she brushes past. “I’ll bring her back to you.” And she is gone, more smoke in the air. 

The kitchen door closes with a quiet click after Moriarty and Joan stares at it. A hollow, ringing sound fills her ears. What has she done? What did she just condemn those men to? Her hands are shaking again, her stomach is churning. She takes one step towards the stairs before her stomach seizes. She vomits into the sink, reaching over and over again until her stomach has nothing left to give but bile.

_What have I done?_


	6. Chapter 6

_Things you didn't say at all - jxm_

When Kayden comes back, she is shivering with Moriarty’s long wool overcoat draped over her shoulders. It cloaks her in a swath of charcoal gray. Moriarty’s fingers curl like bony roots over her shoulder. They are an anchor, or perhaps a connection. Kayden’s hair hangs limp around her face. Her hand moves, its path wandering. Kayden is fearful of the touch that comes, and of the way Moriarty’s eyes narrow and her hand twitches at the brush of their fingers.

That gesture, the shared half breath of contact between mother and daughter, is everything to Joan. The connection between them is tenuous and fraught, but it is wrought in ironclad will and paid for in blood.

Kayden doesn’t run to Joan. She doesn’t throw off Moriarty’s coat and wrap her arms around Joan’s waist and cry. She doesn’t do anything at all. She stands there, regarding Joan from across the kitchen. Her expression is as solemn as any priest Joan has ever met, and every bit as judgmental. It is an uncomfortable scrutiny.

Joan glances up to meet Moriarty’s gaze, only to see a streak of blood on her cheek. “Are you hurt?” She doesn’t know if she is speaking to Kayden or Moriarty.

“No.” Kayden’s voice is a blunted knife. Moriarty’s fingers curl more tightly into her shoulder, taking root almost, against that sea of felted wool.

The kitchen is silent for a moment. Joan wonders if making tea would make this conversation easier. She’s had enough tea to last a lifetime, but the motions of it could help break up this silent standoff. Joan shifts her weight, intent on the sink and distraction, when Moriarty speaks:

“Kayden, why don’t you run along upstairs and tell Detective Bell and Sherlock that you’re alright.” She pulls her coat from the girl’s shoulders. Joan’s breath comes in a quick, sharp gasp. There is blood splattered across Kayden’s usually pristine white school uniform.

Moriarty looks down at Kayden, and Kayden’s expression is warry. Joan realizes, with a jolt of horrible clarity that has her wanting to double over the sink and reach once more, that Kayden saw what Moriarty did to the men who took her.

“I don’t want to talk to the police.”

“You went missing, honey. You have to tell them you’ve been found.” The words tumble out of Joan’s mouth like the vomit she’s just barely holding in. “Sherlock’s there though. And it’s just Marcus – Detective Bell. You’ve met him before.”

“Sherlock will make me take a bath.” Kayden protests, but she is already headed out of the kitchen. Her footfalls are heavy on the stairs, and, when they stop, the voices upstairs grow quiet and concerned. Soon Kayden’s voice joins them, higher, more urgent.

There are no words for what Joan has condoned. No words for what she’s willingly turned a blind eye to Moriarty doing. Over and over, as this intensified, as Moriarty pushed her way into Joan’s life and Joan allowed her to take root, Joan has ignored things that she should not. Moriarty is as slippery as any eel, but Joan has herself half-convinced she can fix her.

Her fingers grip the edge of the sink. Moriarty has her coat slung over one arm. Her hair is frizzing, a halo of gold in the kitchen light.

“How many?”

Moriarty takes a step forward, and then stops. She raises her hand to her cheek and rubs at the blood. “Enough to be troublesome.”

“Will she lie for you?” Joan’s hands are shaking. She grips the sink more tightly.

Looking down, her hair falling into her eyes, Moriarty seems to deflate. Her presence is no longer blinding to Joan, it as though the dazzling star she’s grown grudgingly fond of has faded. Exhaustion colors her every movement as she slips closer to Joan, her coat casually tossed onto the kitchen counter amid the remnants of breakfast. Her fingers curl around Joan’s wrists, pulling her shaking hands away from the sink and letting them sit, still quivering, between their bodies.

“I don’t know.” Moriarty’s fingers are like ice. Her grip loosens, her fingers wander over Joan’s chin and brow, cupping at the back of Joan’s neck and pulling her close. Her lips taste of blood, metallic, unwelcome. She pulls back, eyes downcast. “I—” Her throat works. “Will you lie for me, Joan?”

I can’t. Joan wants to say. I love you but I can’t. Moriarty’s eyes are the color of the sky at mid-winter. So blue Joan could get lost in them. They chase away Joan’s protests. Push her forward into another kiss. This one tastes of gratitude.

There are footsteps on the stairs, light and then heavy. Marcus and Sherlock are coming down. Kayden leading the way. “See what she says,” Moriarty murmurs as she steps back, out of Joan’s personal space. “Follow her lead.”

“I wo—” The refusal to lie about murder just done dies on Joan’s lips. Kayden has come back into the kitchen. Sherlock is holding her hand. He looks stricken by the same realization as Joan.

“I told them how they shot each other because they were mad about the ransom.”

“There was a ransom?” Joan asks.

Kayden looks almost exactly like her mother, smiling smugly and standing off to one side. “Of course there was.”

The little girl before her is a good liar, but a glance at Sherlock’s face tells the true story. He’s not condoning it either, but he’s letting Kayden tell her fib all the same.


	7. Chapter 7

_things you said too quietly - jxm_

Kayden keeps secrets well. Joan watches her as she moves through the house. Her movements are childish, fingering Sherlock’s lock collection, pulling down books at random. She’s bored in this house: there is nothing for her here. Yet she trails after Moriarty most mornings, watching her go from soft in Joan’s sweater to razor sharp and cutting – off to Wall Street and whatever it is she’s doing there.

(Joan doesn’t ask. She doesn’t want to know.)

It is the leaving that gets to Kayden, now that she’s out of school for the holidays.

“Why haven’t you let her send me away?” She asks Joan three days before Christmas over breakfast. Her school is on break, she’s working her way through _Number the Stars_. Joan’s half-buried in a murder investigation, the case file propped up on the orange juice. “She wants to, you know.”

Sherlock is quietly folding his laundry, the door to his bedroom half-way open. He’s listening, not speaking. Not judging. He’s made his peace with this, Joan thinks. He likes having Kayden around. 

“Does she really, Kayden?” Joan raises an eyebrow. “I think she’ll do just about anything to keep you with her.”

From his bedroom, Sherlock lets out a little barking laugh and Joan feels sick. It was never her intent to imply – yet the pieces slide so easily into place. The thin splatter of blood across Kayden’s white school shirt when Moriarty brought her back that day – the way she and Moriarty talked for a long time in the bathroom after Marcus left that day – the way Moriarty got rid of the bloodstain later.

(“What did you tell her?” Joan asked later, once Kayden had drifted into an uneasy sleep under Joan’s watchful eye.

Moriarty hummed pensively, her fingers submerged in sudsy in the kitchen sink. She scrubbed at the blood splatter on Kayden’s shirt with a toothbrush – Sherlock’s toothbrush – and didn’t say anything for some time.  It was only when her soapy fingers slipped on the tap that she turned to Joan. Her expression was unreadable, her eyes shining in the kitchen light. “Nothing. I told her nothing.”

“That’s bull—”

“She didn’t ask me about that.”

“You – you…”

“I _what_ Watson?” Moriarty’s shoulders were squared. Ready for the fight Joan didn’t have in her.

Joan runs a hand through her hair. _You murdered 10 people in front of her_ somehow doesn’t quite articulate what she’s feeling. “You had to tell her something.”

And Moriarty’s lips moved with words Joan could not hear.)

Kayden sullenly turns a page in her book. “I doubt it.”

“I think she’ll surprise you.” Joan knows it isn’t much of a reassurance, but it is something more than Kayden’s had before. Maybe that will be enough.

-

Kayden wants to go to church on Christmas Eve. Sherlock takes her because Joan doesn’t really _get_ Christianity beyond the perfunctory gift giving and Moriarty had looked so alarmed to be asked that Joan caught herself wondering why.

When Sherlock’s ushered Kayden out into the cold night Joan builds a fire. Moriarty stands before a Christmas cactus strung up with a handful of fairy lights, her arms wrapped around herself.

“Why didn’t you take her?” Joan asks.

“Why didn’t you?”

Joan closes her eyes. She should have seen that coming.

“You know why I didn’t.”

“You can’t claim cultural ignorance - you grew up in America with a white father, Joan.”  Moriarty adjusts a strand of lights and perches it more artistically around a long, tubular bloom.  Her fingers splay out across the rubbery cactus leaves. “Unless he was Jewish, I suppose.”

“He wasn’t religious. No one in my family is.” Joan scowls and goes back to poking at the fire. The logs are catching now. Soon the room will be warm and maybe they could stop arguing—

Joan freezes, caught mid thought, when she hears the tell-tale rustle of a plant leaf snapping from the stem. “Stop picking at my plant.”

Moriarty’s grin is self-satisfied.  She comes to stand next to Joan and throws the brown leaves into the flames. Her fingers curl around Joan’s waist, bony and rigid. Joan wants to pull away, but finds herself frozen, leaning into the warmth.  “Stop fussing with the fire and answer my question.” Moriarty’s voice is a whisper in her ear.

“Answer mine first.”

It earns her a low chuckle and an easy grin. Moriarty is sly, her fingers gentle now. They tug at Joan’s clothing and draw her back to the sofa and the mess of blankets and books Sherlock’s left there. “It’s Christmas Eve, Watson, let’s not argue.” And though Joan wants an answer to her question more than anything, she does not press.

It’s only later that they speak again. The fire has roared to life and died down once more. Joan likes the moments like this – when the quiet lets her forget who they are and the roles they play. She can run her hand lazily up and down the curve of Moriarty’s back, counting her vertebrae silently.

“I want -” Moriarty’s voice is muffled in Joan’s shoulder, “-to stay.”

Joan’s fingers freeze.  She must have misheard. Moriarty could never ask that, it goes unspoken between them, the question that is never asked. It can never be asked. Fear grips her, the very cessation of all motion, the world narrowing to the gentle burn of Moriarty’s breath at her collarbone. What’s being asked, Joan cannot accept. Not now. Maybe not ever. Allowing her to stay is condoning so much.

(But she wants it. Wants to believe she can save Moriarty, even though she knows it’s impossible.)

“Sorry?”

Moriarty sits up, her pupils blown and her lips pursing into a thin line. She’s been caught whispering the truth. She knows it. “I want Kayden to stay. Here. With you.”

Joan isn’t going to let her get away with it. “And you?”

“Watson, you cannot be serious.”

Joan’s cheeks burn and she looks away. Moriarty’s fingers brush her cheek and pull her back. The truth is a lie – like smoke in the wind and rain out on this holy night. It is the slanted angle of Moriarty’s lips on her own, kissing gently and reminding Joan of all this can never be. There is no fight between them anymore; their pax is small with brown hair and Moriarty’s eyes, staring up at them in wonderment.

The kiss breaks. Joan doesn’t pull away. Their foreheads bump. “You’re her mother, Jamie. She needs you. Maybe more now than ever. She knows you now. She _likes_ you.”

It is Moriarty who draws back, her eyes unblinking and cruel – the mask she loves to wear. “I think you’re wrong, Watson.”

“Am I?” What goes unsaid is the challenge in Moriarty’s eyes. Deep within them is the silent demand that _Joan_ be the one who wants her to stay, that it cannot be the child because the child means _nothing_.

Joan’s jaw clenches and she wrests her gaze back and focuses on the fire. Somehow, the hiss-pop of the wood doesn’t make her jump anymore. Not when she’s sitting next to someone far more dangerous. Her shoulders sag. Next to Moriarty all the air appears to vacate the room. Joan is suffocating, breathing in deep gulps of stolen air. 

“Or will I become just another in a long string of disappointing parental figures for her?” Moriarty leans back, her fingers curling loosely in the throw blanket. She looks like a cat, fat and self-satisfied after getting away with murder. She’s goading Joan, daring her, pressing her wishing she’ll speak out.

Words are wrested from Joan’s throat. She cannot speak, choking on the absolution she could offer in favor of damning silence.

Minutes tick by. Joan watches the fire. Moriarty watches Joan slowly run out of air and space and time. When she can stand it no more, Joan gets to her feet. “What you mean to Kayden is entirely up to you.” She tugs the screen in front of the fire. “I’m going to bed.”

Jamie is gone in the morning. Vanished in a swirl of coming snow.


	8. Chapter 8

_Things you said when there were too many miles between us – jxm_

_(jxm 60. It’s a hobby of mine to prove you wrong.)_

When the phone rings it takes all Joan has to answer it. The number is blocked, just a void on the screen where the requisite contact’s name should reside. Her mind rejects the act of sliding her thumb across the screen. Her body rejects it too, trembling with the effort to keep her fingers steady while Joan firms her resolve and swallows down the hurt.

It’s the hurt that cuts deep into her, more than anything else. It festers with resentment, a weeping wound of might-have-beens. She never expected it to hurt when this dance began.  

She never expected the dance to take place at all.

Her hands are still and her breathing steady. She is calm. She is ready for a fight.

She is a million emotions incapable of finding equilibrium.

What she says is: “I can’t believe you.”

It isn’t a greeting. The trust they’ve built is gone. There is nothing left of the familiar feel of the past two months, the easy companionship and playful verbal duels. It’s all burnt up now, ash floating into the cold December night.

Moriarty is silent. If not for the slow inhalation punctuating it, Joan would assume she were speaking to a ghost. She presses on, fumbling blindly for words she can’t put in the right order. Admonishment comes before heartache, comes before loss, and Kayden – Kayden comes before everything else. “You did the absolute worst thing you could do to her.”

_I can’t believe you did that to me._

And when Moriarty does speak, her voice nestles against Joan’s wounded heart, filling Joan with the uncomfortable ache of longing and loss. “Did you expect any less of me, Watson?”

Joan bites back the truth. The foolish hope. It hurts. “No,” she answers. “I don’t suppose I did.”

The silence is so absolute it sounds like the distant ringing of slight tinnitus. Joan polishes her nails on her shirt and stares out her bedroom window. Her hand hurts from clutching the phone so tightly. She doesn’t relent. It’s the only thing keeping her from shaking. Her sorrow and anger melding into a bitter rage she’ll regret later.

“Did she get my gift?”

“Gift?” It is stupid a moment after, when Joan remembers. Right, it’s Christmas to further salt the wound festering in Kayden’s heart ( _Joan’s heart)_. She thinks of the books, wrapped neatly in plain red paper, classics she loved as a girl Kayden’s age. She thinks of Sherlock’s small beehive and books on advice for a first time apiculturist. She thinks of the lone little box set on her bedside table, a ring inside inscribed with a promise. She knows the matching one rests on Moriarty’s finger. The promise between them, to care for the little girl, will never be spoken of again.

But there was no gift for Kayden. Joan would have seen –

(Kayden on Christmas morning, curled up with a brand new phone, clicking away, a small smile on her face as she wandered through the house looking for catchable sprites. Kayden speaking late into the night to her friends from school – so much so that Joan had to take it away. She never once questioned where the phone came from, she just assumed Sherlock wanted Kayden to be reachable should she get into trouble again.)

“The phone.” Moriarty’s voice cuts through the ringing memory with all the precision of a surgeon. She does hate idle silence.

“Ah.” Joan fumbles.

Moriarty turns teasing, warmth creeping into her voice, affection. “Honestly, Watson, I thought you were a trained detective.”

And Joan crumbles; a sandcastle with no hopes of resisting the wave of anger that overtakes her, words tumbling forth like sea foam churning. “You _promised_. Isn’t that what it means? You promised to take care of her and you’re gone, leaving her with expensive presents in your stead. How could you do that to her?”

“I gave her the greatest gift of all. I gave her you.”

Joan throws the phone across the room. It shatters and the pieces rain down on the hardwood floor. Joan’s breath catches in her chest. She gropes for the windowsill, her fingers scrabbling as she slides down the wall. She sits, staring at her hands and the mark of her bondage though watery tears. The ring glints in the weak winter sun. She can’t bring herself to throw it, too, away.

-

Kayden goes back to school in the second week of January. Joan doesn’t enroll her at Ms. Porter’s despite Moriarty’s want to see her “safe.” Maybe for high school, but there are better schools in the city. Joan likes her in the city. She’s closer – safer in the presence of all of Sherlock’s police friends and his irregulars.

Their mornings are hectic. Kayden reads the newspaper and asks questions Joan cannot possibly answer. She points out irregularities in the stocks reports, and to articles alleging a massive fraud cover-up.

“Oh, for the love of…” Joan leans over Kayden’s shoulder and skims the article. She frowns and flips back a few pages. She knows nothing about numbers at this level, she pays a broker to handle her investments.

Moriarty though, Moriarty loves numbers like this. Kayden too, judging by how easily she’s pulled the clues together. It frightens Joan. It makes the resentment she feels at the void where Moriarty once was in the house sting all the more.

“Is that why she had to leave?” Kayden’s question is innocent. Joan needs more coffee. “Because she was going to get caught?”

“She doesn’t _get_ caught. Sherlock finds it vexing.”

“You caught her.”

Joan feels herself smile, a little fond, a little proud. Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder. “Maybe I just make a hobby of proving her wrong.”

Kayden frowns. “I don’t think she likes that.”

“Did she tell you that?” Joan hooks her ankle around the chair beside Kayden, pulls it out and sinks down into it. “On your phone?” She doesn’t know what she’s asking Kayden. What it means if Moriarty is still speaking to her. Does it mean Joan cannot be angry, that this period of distance between them is only meant to be temporary?

  _Does that make it hurt any less_?

“She tells me lots of things, Joan,” Kayden answers. “Things about you – about what she thinks of you.”

Newsprint smears across Kayden’s fingers. Joan passes her a napkin. Kayden carefully wipes her fingers off and goes back to her breakfast. 

Joan watches her eat, wonders if it’s normal for a girl Kayden’s age to inhale food like she’s starving, wonders if she should pack bigger lunches for Kayden, wonders what Moriarty tells Kayden she thinks of Joan.

Not knowing is an itch Joan cannot help but scratch. She’s always been curious. (She isn’t sure if she’s the spider or the fly, or if they’re something else entirely.)

(She thinks she might wear the ring for more than one reason.)

“What does she think of me?”

“She gave you that, didn’t she?” Kayden uses her spoon, still sticky with oatmeal, to point at the band on Joan’s finger. “I think it’s obvious.”

(You’re in love with her, duh.)

The ringing in her ears comes back, and Joan doesn’t dare reply.

-

Kayden forgets her phone on the kitchen table. Or maybe it is on purpose. Kayden has the necessary genes to facilitate sneakiness and plotting. Joan takes it up to her bedroom with the laundry and is set to leave it on the charger when it rings. Joan stares down at the contact names, curious. Nosy. Kayden would hate her for looking.

_Jamie – Cell._

It irks her, that Moriarty’s given away a number so freely to this child, when she always calls Joan from blocked, restricted and unlisted numbers. Moriarty collects secrets, she never, ever gives them away. Yet this secret is real, tangible. The sort of thing Joan could write down and save in her own phone, if she was so inclined.

She doesn’t want to, though. Because to do that would be a violation of whatever trust between them. The trust Moriarty has shattered again and again. The trust Joan nurtures like their fragile, second child to match the unwanted first. She should stop. She knows.

The phone buzzes. Joan debates answering. Shoves her hands in her pockets. Paces around the room chewing at her lip, knowing she shouldn’t. Until she decides she doesn’t care anymore. She reaches for the phone and slides her fingers over a picture of Harry Stiles and Moriarty’s equally irksome contact photo.

Stylized – the letter M in Old English Gothic.

_Christ,_ Joan thinks _, she thinks highly of herself._ Joan’s almost charmed. Almost.

Perhaps she can pretend she thought it was Kayden calling to figure out if she left her phone at home.  Maybe it will be easier to lie to Moriarty over the phone.

 “Hello Joan.”

And if Joan wants to know how Moriarty knew, she’ll never ask. “She forgot her phone.”

“I know. I told her to.”

“And she just does what you say?” This is news to Joan.

“You weren’t answering my calls.”

“My phone is broken.” Joan says flatly and it hurts. Aches like the festering wound she’s ignoring in her heart. “Please don’t use Kayden as an intermediary.”

“She’s worried about you, Joan.” There’s a pause, a quiet steeling of will. Joan wonders how hard this is for Moriarty to admit.  “So’s Sherlock.”

“Leave him out of this.”

“Oh, but why would I do that, darling? Isn’t what we have what we’re supposed to want: a yoke around our necks in the form of a commitment to care for her?” Joan sits down heavily on Kayden’s bed. She can’t have this conversation. Moriarty pushes, and Joan can’t stand it.  “Sherlock’s just another piece of the pretty picture we paint together. The brother and the father and the once upon a time lover all at once.”

Joan thinks she can hear crows cawing over the line. Or maybe outside. An ill omen, none the less.  “She misses you.”

“We speak most every day.”

“It isn’t the same, Jamie. A child needs her mother.”

“She has you.”

On a sigh, the truth slips gently from Joan’s lips. “I know she has me, but she needs you too.”

 “You’re wearing it.”

Joan looks down at the ring on her finger. “It’s horribly sentimental, Jamie. Not really like you at all.”

“Perhaps I did it for you.”

“You don’t do things for other people.”

Moriarty hums and falls silent for a moment. The crows call again and this time it echoes over the line and in the air around Joan. “Look out the window, Joan.”

The floor is cold beneath Joan’s feet. Kayden sleeps with the blinds open.  Joan stares down at the street to see a solitary figure clad in a familiar grey wool overcoat. Snow swirls in the sky, the overcast sky above casting Moriarty in a harsh blue. She looks like a painting, cut with a few careful brush strokes through the blown-glass windowpane. Joan presses her hand to the glass.

_How is it possible for someone so large to seem so small?_

A strong wind picks up, and Moriarty’s hair blows, loose in the wind. Joan’s tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth.  She licks her lips.

 “You’re—”

She’s still angry. She’s so angry. But this? This is a _risk_ that is not taken lightly. It means something. Joan’s fingers burn patches of fog onto the window pane.

“The promise meant something, Joan. I needed to take care of a few things overseas. Kayden deserves stability and I… I think I…”

Joan doesn’t have to hear her say the words. To say the words would mean the anger from where there were too many miles between them would come back. And perhaps it was also Moriarty’s habit to prove Joan wrong.

The word bubbles to her lips, an answer to all the questions that go unsaid between them. “ _Yes_.” And then. “Do you want to come inside?”

Moriarty stares up at Joan, Joan stares down at Moriarty, her breath fogging at the glass. Moriarty’s head, damp with snow dips once, a nod. The line goes dead. Joan goes downstairs and lets her in from the cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming along for the ride, guys!


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